AHP/ANP in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Corporate Social Responsibility

The themes of this symposium focus on three areas that have changed the world in recent years. However, rather than consider them as being independent, we need to think of them as interlocked, because their future depends on each other. Thus, it is befitting that the AHP/ANP focuses on them now, for the ANP helps us to study interdependent systems.

Without technology, the implementation of the AHP/ANP would not have been possible. AHP/ANP helps us to understand entrepreneurship and cultivate entrepreneurial talent to meet the social and economic needs, reduce jobless stress, and promote social harmony. Without the entrepreneurial capabilities and tenacity of the initiators of the theory, the spread of the AHP/ANP theory all over the world would not have been possible. Finally, corporate social responsibility (CSR) comprises different stakeholders, who are concerned with sustainability, quality, and corporate brand image. CSR is multi-faceted and has long-term impacts on economic, social, and environmental well-being, especially in health, safety, equity, humanity, child-care, and education. Without the ability to measure intangibles, it would not have been possible to understand the contribution that corporations are making to our society in the social dimension. In a sense, they represent the values of the creator of the theory, Thomas L. Saaty, who pushed developers beyond their comfort zones and against all odds, to create technology and spread ideas all over the world to show that intangibles can be measured in relative terms.

These three themes should be explored in all disciplines. We encourage researchers and practitioners who would like to attend this symposium to explore ideas in new and established areas without fear of being wrong. If it takes hundreds of times to solve a problem, we learned more than just to solve the problem, but hundreds of ways not to solve that problem.

Intuition, past experience and knowledge are the primary requisites of good decision making. However, without measurement all this is futile. Measurement is needed to understand the strength of relationships in multidimensional systems. These are the ingredients of the themes of this symposium.